Figure 1:
(Top) Proton-proton collisions at the LHC could produce the heavy bosonic superpartner of the quark (the “scalar quark”), Q. The cascade decay of the Q particle produces four leptons (l=e, μ or τ) as well as a quark jet (q) and missing energy associated with the unobserved fermionic partner of the Higgs particles (H). The Q is produced in association with a scalar antiquark, which could itself decay into four leptons, leading to a possible total of eight leptons. The dashed (solid) lines represent bosonic (fermionic) particles, while the strongly interacting (colored) particles are in red. (Bottom) One of the possible hierarchies of superpartner masses that would lead to the decay of two colored particles (in this case, two Q particles) and produce eight isolated leptons. (See text for the definition of the particle labels.)